Manual For Fiction Writers by Block, Lawrence (classic books to read .TXT) 📗

recently to the editor of one of the little literary magazines. He buys three or four stories an issue and publishes four issues a year. So he's in the market for twelve or fifteen stories annually, and how many fiction submissions per year do you suppose he receives?

Four thousand.

The odds would seem overwhelming. On due reflection, the inference you might draw might be that anyone would have to have his head examined to buck those odds. On the other hand, twelve or fifteen people every year do get a story accepted by this publication, and those twelve or fifteen stories have one thing in common.

They all came out of the pile of four thousand.

The more you submit, the more you reduce the odds against eventual publication. But nobody ever sold a story by leaving it in a desk drawer.

Yes? Did you have a question out there?

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I agree with what you say, but when one of my stories keeps coming back I get discouraged. I figure they're right and I'm wrong. It's only natural, isn't it?

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Of course. Even a seasoned pro finds rejection disheartening, and for a beginner it's that much more of a blow. What you have to do is work on your attitudes so that rejection doesn't lead inevitably to dejection.

The best way I know to manage this is to make your resubmission policy as automatic as you possibly can. Establish a hard and fast rule to get a manuscript back in the mail within twenty-four hours of its receipt. Better yet, send it out immediately?make it the first order of business to get that script off your desk and back in the mail.

One reason not to keep it around is you might read it, and that's a bad idea. You've already read it enough. The addition of a rejection slip isn't going to heighten your enthusiasm. So don't read it. Don't even keep it around long enough to tempt yourself.

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Just submit the damn thing forever?

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Well, forever's a long time. You can work out your own system, but I'd recommend keeping it constantly at market for a minimum of a year. Then, if you want, read it. Maybe you'll see something you want to change. Maybe you'll decide you hate it altogether. After a year, you can give yourself permission to withdraw it from market?or you can confirm your original judgment and resubmit for another year.

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Isn't it a mistake to submit a story to an editor who's already rejected a different-story of mine?

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No, and why should it be? Remember, you weren't rejected. Your story was rejected. It's not the same thing.

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It costs a lot to keep a story in the mail. Don't you reach a point of diminishing returns?

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Admittedly, the whole process was less of a wrench when first-class mail cost four cents an ounce. Even so, the high cost of submission isn't all that high. If you ultimately sell the story, you'll come out ahead. If the story proves ultimately unsalable, you'll have spent a few dollars establishing its unsalability. Depending on your current status, you may regard the expense of stamps and envelopes as part of the cost of doing business, an aspect of one's apprenticeship, or the price of a relatively inexpensive hobby.

I don't believe it when someone tells me he stopped submitting a story because of the expense. I think he's simply rationalizing an unwillingness to face further rejection.

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You mentioned the long odds we all face. Isn't part of the problem the amount of amateurish tripe every editor has to wade through? It seems to me that people who submit inferior work make it harder for the rest of us. Why don't you say something to discourage them from wasting editors' time?

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I received a letter from a Florida writer who made essentially this point. What she failed to realize is that a writer's own perception of a story's salability is no index of anything.

Unquestionably, a great many would-be writers submit inferior work. But I don't think they do so knowing it to be inferior.

Nor is this glut of inferior work a problem for the rest of us. If my story doesn't sell, it's not the inferior stories that have kept it from selling. Quite the opposite. It's the stories that were better than mine that got in my way.

If I were going to be self-seeking, then, I'd try to discourage good writers from submitting their work for publication. Of course nothing I might say would be likely to influence their behavior?any more than it would influence those people sending in amateurish efforts.

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Back up a few steps. You dismissed the pain of rejection very blithely a few mintues ago. Believe me, it's real pain!

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No kidding. Do you think I enjoy it myself?

There are some things you can do, however, to minimize the pain. First of all, you can keep involved in the constant production of new work. By focusing your concentration upon the work itself and making the marketing process as mechanical as possible, you can shrug off rejection more easily.

This leads to the second method of reducing pain. Keep as many things in the mail as possible. That way when a story comes back it's not your entire output that's been rejected but only a very small fraction thereof. By the same token, you'll have so many swallows up in the air that one will be returning to Capistrano every day or so. Oddly, this makes things easier. When rejection becomes a routine